Liveblogging the Golden Globes Part 4

8:49 Commercial Break. I recently discovered these little individual serving pie slices from Edwards. I've had them in Reese's, Oreo, and Key Lime. The key lime, which I'm enjoying right now, is definitely my favorite. They're only $3 for a 2-pack. And even though it says they have to be flawed, I've never had to. It's the ideal little dessert for people who often eat dinner alone, late, on their couches. Wow, that sounds sad. But it's not! I love eating my late dinners alone on my couch, watching television.

8:52 Wow, Pierce Brosnan looks really happy to see Jake Gyllenhall on stage. Weird. Jake's introducing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for Best Drama. I will see this one. It could be too long and ridiculous. But if they pull it off, I think it could be one of those genuinely transporting movies. I know I said I was sick of Brad Pitt, but it's got Cate Blanchett. Who I am decidedly not sick of.

8:54 Holy crap. Drew Barrymore's giant blonde Marilyn Monroe hair is AWESOME in a trainwreck way. I love it. She looks wasted and crazy, but I think her hair is giving off that impression all by itself. I nominate Drew's hair for best supporting actress in a television special. Anyway, Best Miniseries or TV Movie is John Adams. Which gives Tom Hanks a chance to accept an award. How novel!

8:57 Demi Moore is still extraordinarily well preserved. Oh, and she just told Rumer not to hunch! Ha! Demi must go nuts whenever she sees Rumer in photos, because the girl has the insulent hunch down. Best Supporting Actor in a Drama. This one is full of great performances, and it goes to Heath Ledger for Dark Knight, which is deserved and also really sad. Oh, they've prepared a clip of Heath as the Joker in case he one. Smart, and also really sad. He was amazing. It's awful for the world that we won't have the chance to see him do more, but much worse is the fact that such a talented person died so young and didn't have the opportunity to really enjoy what would surely have been an amazing body of work. I didn't expect this to get to me, but it did. Anyway, good for Heath, but it really doesn't matter at this point, which is the worst part of all.

Liveblogging the Golden Globes Part 3

8:37 Ricky Gervais! Always funny. I'm sure I'll get sick of it eventually, but I think it's 15 years off or so. He yells at them all for talking and being rude. And then he tells Kate Winslet that he told her she'd win if she made a Holocaust movie. Also, he's got a beer in hand, which is how this is supposed to go. Ok, this almost makes up for the Best TV Actor win. He introduces Happy Go Lucky. If I want to catch up on the nominated films while they're still in theaters, I have my work cut out for me.

8:40 The Jonas Brothers. They did a good job of reading and wearing perfectly matched/but sort of mismatched suits selected by their stylist. Category is Best Animated Film. I'm guessing the winner is Wall-E....

8:41 ... and the winner is Wall-E. Shocking. But really, are they going to give it to Bolt? Kung Fu Panda? I have total respect for what animators do -- they are extraordinary artists and deserve to be recognized. But most mainstream animated films won't get me to a theater.

8:42: Johnny Depp presents Best Actress in a Comedy. I have to say it's nice how the GGs move along at quite the clip. The only one of these movies I've seen is Vicky, Christina, Barcelona, and I really enjoyed Penelope Cruz. Sally Hawkins wins for Happy Go Lucky. She really is cute. Maybe I'll go see this one. It's at least more likely than me watching Mama Mia.

Liveblogging the Golden Globes, Part 2

8:20 Best Supporting Actress in TV goes to Laura Dern for playing Katherine Harris in Recount. This category was much heavier on Miniseries/Movie nominees than the men, so the win bothers me less (though why aren't any of the Mad Men ladies nominated? or Kristen Chenoweth in Pushing Daisies). But Laura Dern just called HBO "brave and amazing". Listen folks, HBO can no longer be called "brave". And certainly not for making a movie about a political fiasco with a fairly predictable lefty-Hollywood take on it. Ugh, and she's getting political preachy. This is why I don't watch these things. I sincerely don't give a fuck what Hollywood people think about politics or social issues.

8:27 Don Cheadle introduces Burn After Reading for the Best Comedy category. Cheadle rocks - I always forget how funny he is because he's generally making those insanely serious, depressing films. Anyway, 20 seconds of Cheadle is more amusing than Burn After Reading looks. I'm officially tired of George and Brad. I know! But really, the charm offensive is burning itself out.

8:28: Best Actor in a TV Show, Miniseries, or TV Movie. God, this one's hard. Hugh Laurie, Jon Hamm, Dexter.... I honestly don't have a favorite. And of course, Gabriel Byrne wins for In Treatment, which I've never seen and sounds vaguely painful. Even better, he's not even there to accept. So we were arbitrarily robbed of what would have been the best acceptance speech of the night from HL, Hamm, or my favorite serial killer. Fuck you, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and your hard-on for the Home Box Office.

8:31: Best Actress in a TV Show, Miniseries, or TV Movie. This category is getting tired. Kyra Sedgwick and Mariska Hargitay are nominated again. Luckily, Anna Paquin wins for True Blood. Is she allowed to be this year's Golden Globe New Talented Ingenue Girl? Because she's been famous her entire life. Nevertheless, I'm happy to see fresh blood (pun intended), even though I've yet to get into True Blood. I'm weary of vampires, in this Twilight world.

Liveblogging the Golden Globes

I found myself camped in front of the TV this evening watching the Golden Globes, which is actually not something I'd normally do. But I've decided to liveblog at least the first hour (24 premiers tonight, and I might want to watch it before bed) just to see if it makes it more interesting.

8:04 Jennifer Lopez presents Kate Winslet with the GG for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama. Jen looks to be trying to compete with those divorce rumors. She's wearing a gold draped dress that's almost as slutty as that infamous dress from her P. Diddy years. But she looks gorgeous and can pull it off, so good for her.

Kate is flabbergasted and also extraordinarily grateful. There's a touch of "finally!" but she has been making Oscar bait for years so I can understand it. I haven't seen The Reader or Revolutionary Road, though I have to admit I'll probably be suckered into the latter by the Leo & Kate reunite press. Which is weird, because I absolutely hated Titanic and all the attendant hoopla. I think I'm happy to see them both all grown up and making real movies, having mostly escaped from the psycho insane scrutiny of the big boat movie. Anyway, kuddos to Kate.

8:10 Bruce Springsteen has won for Best Song.... in something. The category is a bit fuzzy to me because I'm distracted by Rumer Willis, who appears to be this year's Ms. Golden Globes. I could have sworn she'd already done it, but I guess not (again, I tend not to pay too close attention). Her dress is gorgeous (deep plum, a-line, interesting twisted bodice/waistline) and I looove the red hair on her, but does she always have to look so smug? Your parents are, collectively, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and Ashton Kutcher. You're rich and famous. Get over yourself.

8:17 Winner for Best Supporting Actor in a TV Series, Miniseries, or TV Movie. I have no doubt Tom Wilkinson was great in John Adams; he's great in everything. But these categories are such crap. I'm glad Piven didn't win again, but both Neil Patrick Harris (who was great on SNL last night) and Alec Baldwin totally deserve a shout out. But they don't get it because they're in the junk drawer of GG categories. Crap.

Commentary: Scheduled Heart Failure

I've really been enjoying House this season, so I decided to pick up the Seasons 1-4 DVDs last week to go back and catch up on all the good stuff I've missed over the years. Also, I wanted to see just how formulaic the show really is. And it's true, House virtually always misdiagnosis the patient in a way that will cause a seizure somewhere before the final commercial break. It got me thinking: is this such a bad thing?

I find that even when I'm watching three or four episodes of House in a row, I don't mind the repetition. In fact, I find it somewhat soothing. I can rationalize this by pointing out that the repetition is realistic. Most people's lives are cyclical. My job is basically the same from week to week, and I imagine this is true for anyone who's been in the same profession for a while. On the other hand, a television program about my job would probably cause seizures and ass bleeds, just like on House.

Even fictional formulas get stale after a while. I used to really enjoy Law & Order, and now I always assume that anyone who says they watch that show is joking. Because really, once you've seen one episode you've seen all 8,437,601.

The key to making a formula work is to use it as a tool rather than a template. If your show structure requires you to have a patient almost die in Act II, then you can get creative with that aspect of the formula, occasionally turning it on its head so that the patient actually does die, or the death is only a trick, or the thing causing the near-death-experience is a tick lodged in the patient's vagina.

The show formula can also be used to flesh out the characters. Traits are revealed as we watch the character react to similar but not identical situations each week. Dr. House is virtually always a jerk to his patients and constantly accusing them of lying. But when last week's fitness guru patient concealed her gastric bypass, House was indifferent. Which is how we know that his flirtation with Cuddy was really affecting him.

A television show formula is like the rhyme structure in a classic sonnet. It's not so much an opportunity for fill-in-the-blank writing as a way to reign in your creativity and maintain continuity and character construction.

It's also easy to peg network shows like House and L&O as formulaic while lauding Mad Men or Weeds for being more "original". But from what I know about television writing, every show has some kind of story formula which allows the team of writers to storyboard episodes. Jane Espenson once pointed out that Gilmore Girls was a tough show to write for because the episode structure was unusual, with commercial breaks scheduled in the middle of acts. And GG was a character-driven serial, not a procedural.

Sure, commercial breaks make these kinds of structures necessary on the networks and basic cable, whereas the premium cable channels can get away with more. And that's true. But it doesn't mean that HBO and Showtime don't still use formulas. Most episodes of Dexter, for instance, involve Dexter in a plastic room holding a knife over the face of drugged criminal. And Dexter is a great, original show. But it still has a formula, albeit a highly original one.

Television writing, like all storytelling, requires rules. The mark of a good show is not whether such rules exist, but rather how well the writers, producers and directors use those rules to create a compelling, as opposed to predictable, story.

Plus, audiences gets confused when they don't get their regularly scheduled ass bleeds at the 00:34 minute mark.